Our rise will come at the expense of South Carolina, Vanderbilt and Georgia for the most part, and possibly Clemson and the North Carolina schools to some degree, although it will be hard to tell. I'm sure there will be recruiting battles with Bama and LSU, as always, but those states are so stocked with talent that it's less of a zero-sum game. Just look at our tradional recruiting areas, and you can tell who we will be pulling talent away from.
I think A&M may have a pretty interesting impact on the West, but I wonder if they will hurt our ability to pull the occasional prized kid out of Texas.
I agree. Spurrier is approaching his 67th birthday and you have to wonder how much longer he will want to continue coaching. It took him almost as long to build South Carolina to its current status as it did for Johnny Majors to rebuild Tennessee. He has probably reached the sustainable peak for that program. Unless they were to hire another coach of Spurrier's caliber, which would seem unlikely, I would anticipate South Carolina declining rather precipitously.
If Franklin is as good as he and the Vanderbilt faithful believe him to be, I would anticipate him leaving Vandy for the first marquis program that comes calling. He made headway last year against us on the recruiting front, but that was achieved, in part, due to the ineptitude of Dooley's instate recruiting efforts.
Richt is only 53, so, in all probability, we are going to have to establish a pattern of beating him head-to-head. Ultimately, however, it is only necessary to regularly pull a few additional SEC caliber-recruits from Georgia. Kiffin realized just how critical the metropolitan Atlanta area was to our recruiting efforts and vowed that we would never again lose to Georgia. (I know, big talk, but it underscored sound logic.)
Even when Fulmer had his recruiting machine fully operational, it was difficult to pull Alabama kids from 'bama and Auburn. (As best I recall, Tee Martin waffled back and forth between Auburn and us several times before signing with Tennessee.) Western North Carolina, particularly as we begin to regain traction on the field, should be a relatively fertile recruiting ground. And it looks like we are beginning to pay attention again to Virginia and the D.C. area.
With respect to Texas, we have had some success in landing kids from the Lone Star State but retention has been an entirely different matter. I'm not sure why, but we have had better success in that respect with guys from the left coast.
Perhaps most importantly, on the home front, let's hope that, with Butch's rededicated efforts, we have seen the last of elite Tennessee kids leaving Big Orange Country for USC, Notre Dame or, even for that matter, Kentucky.
